Jimmie Johnson Wins 55th Daytona 500: Full Results, Analysis

Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 car won the 2013 Daytona 500 after leading 17 laps Sunday, including the most important of them all. It was his second career win at Daytona.

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. finished in second, Mark Martin finished in third place, Brad Keselowski came in fourth and Ryan Newman rounded out the top five.

Danica Patrick ended up in eighth place, the highest finishing spot for any female driver in the event’s history, and led five laps to cap off a very successful event for the second-year star.

Sunday’s race day started off with a spectacular pre-show featuring a performance from the Zac Brown Band. At the start of the race, James Franco gave the command for "Drivers and Danica" to start their engines.

As the cars took the track and the green flag fell on the field, the outside lane, led by Jeff Gordon and the No. 24 car, took off fast once again. Patrick, the first female pole-sitter in NASCAR history, slid to the outside behind them and abandoned the low line.

Gordon led the first lap of the race.

The Great American Race had its fair share of accidents—as well as several lead changes, a few cautions for debris and plenty of hard racing—including a Lap 33 wreck involving huge stars and serious contenders including Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jamie McMurray and Brad Keselowski.

There was also another crash earlier on Lap 138 between Carl Edwards and Trevor Bayne.

The field used the caution to make a pit stop, but after coming back to the green flag once again, the real history was made. On Lap 90, Patrick and the No. 10 car took the lead and she became the first female in the history of the Daytona 500 to ever lead a lap (h/t NASCAR’s Twitter account):

Danica Patrick leads lap 90 and becomes the first woman to lead a lap in the #DAYTONA500. #NASCAR

As the race continued, Joe Gibbs Racing stars and serious contenders Matt Kenseth (Lap 150) and Kyle Busch (Lap 154) had catastrophic engine failures (something that plagued Toyota all afternoon) and were forced to the garage early. At one point, three Gibbs cars were running first, second and third.

That’s a bad day for any team, but especially for one as predominant as Gibbs racing.

On Lap 177, Jeff Burton smashed into the wall, bringing out the yellow flag and allowing the entire field to hit pit road. That evened the playing field for the final run toward the checkered flag.

After another caution came out on Lap 191, the field came to the green and finished the race with Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 team stealing the show for the second time in his career.